Friday, September 18, 2009

shiiiiiiiit i am like 5 hours late with this. I got so caught up in the xkcd book / xkcdsucks book drama that I forgot there were comics to critique. On that: I've come around to the idea that the best idea would be to write the book, of course, but it would be more fun to not give it to him. Surely if Randall hasn't been tipped off by now to our plan, some xkcd fan in attendance will have, and we can just pull a wacky non-rickroll type thing and just let him anticipate something that doesn't happen. THAT IS MY OFFICIAL STANCE even though it goes directly against what i wrote in my introduction to the book. i changed my mind. THE END.

ANYWAY comic 637, scribblewhatever. Obviously, I had no idea what was going on. Neither did you. That's because the nintendoDS game "scribblenauts" only came out the day this comic did. So I don't know who was supposed to get this joke. So I was confused and was like, "well i guess I will have to go to the forums on this one, better take some anti-douchebag spray so i don't get an allergic reaction like last time."

But anyway, then I actually, against all odds, played the game Scribblenauts in between then and now, so now I know exactly what is happening in this comic.

And it sucks. Surprise!

The idea, if you haven't learned it by now, is that the game is based off of this magic notepad, and you can type in most any common noun and then that object will appear there, and you can use it to solve the various puzzles the game presents. Most of the joy of the game - which I had a lot of fun with - is in coming up with crazy nouns and seeing if they are in the game's programming. Cthulu is there, for example, and Godzilla, though lolcat was not. "lolwut" apparently makes your character's head really big. Anyway, that's the point of the game.

So what's happening in this comic is that the girl is playing, she's being amused by what's in the game (as one would be in real life) and then the other guy is like "whatever" and then apparently the game already has "asshole" in there and it looks like him! ha ha. Except, we don't know that the "pretentious asshole" looks like him because we don't actually see what pops up, we are just assured that it must be him. We also get the awkwardness of seeing the girl twice in one panel. There's really no good reason for that. I know that a comic doesn't have to have one panel correspond to one image, one moment in time in a story, but that's at least how xkcd does it basically all the time. So that's weird.

Also is it really that pretentious to say the game is OK for a kid's game? I mean, there's a hell of a lot more pretentious thing you can say about a game. Maybe he just didn't like it. There isn't much in the way of tone that we can figure out from this guy - some comics might feature facial expressions for such a thing, but not xkcd. So that's a little jarring, I guess, to suddenly be told that finding something nice to say about a game - which is a kid's game, ok, just cause it's fun doesn't make that not the case, I mean Toy Story was a kid's movie but we all like it anyway - is assholeish.

Anyway. Making a comic about a game like that, one that just came out and who knows how popular it will get, if at all, or when, if ever, is just like the Ender's Game comic the other day - way too much of a niche, even for a comic that's already in the "nerd" niche.

OK - now, back to the drama over the book!

Posted by
Carl

88 comments:

Also we could totally blow randall's mind with this. Imagine: he expects to receive the XKCD Sucks book, but he also suspects that we might non-rickroll him by not giving it to him, when we could also subvert -that- by giving him an "XKCD is awesome!" book ("From XKCD Sucks with love!"), and then we could subvert -that- idea by giving him a totally unrelated book like "Breadmaking 101" and leaving him to wonder what the hell it all means.

The critical flaw in this plan is that it is based on an unfunny xkcd comic, and it wouldn't work IRL. It's really not about surprise. I'm sure even he knows his comics are not up to par. And the act of presenting the xkcdsucks book at his own book signing would spell out what many of his fans are subconsciously thinking. It's about putting things in perspective. And it's about getting some sort of reaction out of Randall and his fans. You can't really imagine him saying after the party: "Oh boy, no one gave me xkcdsucks book today, what a relief!". You can't imagine xkcd fans tweeting: "Hurray! NO ONE gave xkcdsucks book to Randall today. These xkcdsucks guys are really cool, check them out!". There will be nothing. And that's not really what we want.

The last panel, yeah. It's an interesting technique, but as you say it doesn't work, it just makes it look like she's there twice. Maybe he could have added some speedlines in? To show her turning her head? You know, like you get comics where someone's head is in two different places in one panel cos they've turned it really quickly.

I don't know what to think of today's. I mean, it's not funny, nor is it insightful. It's just an observation I think most of us have made at some point played out as an analogy. Hey, at least he didn't screw up the layout, and it's clever enough to not be banal and pretentious like most of his comics, so while it's not a winner it's not terrible either. Moderately okay work Randall keep it up!

The game didn't come out until yesterday, but anyone who's over the age of 15 and under the age of 40 has a DS flashcard so he's probably just played the ROM for the last week or so. Everyone I know who cares about Scribblenauts played it days ago, although that might just be because all of my DS-playing friends are either poor college students or internet buddies.

I was confused because when she summoned pretentious asshole another version of her popped up in real life, so I thought it was saying she was the pretentious asshole, but that didn't really make sense.

This site is run by fucking children. You get a stupid idea to write a book, run with it, and then someone who thinks things through more than one step into the future comes along and explains why is a bad idea. Then you retreat. If you wanna give thoughtful reviews of xkcd and change Randall's mind(a stated goal in the faq), perhaps you actually be, ya know, thoughtful.

You know I always thought "liberal-arts majors" was a funny reference to stuff like "Sociology" and "Media Studies" but then someone told me it meant English, History, & Philosophy. You know, the Humanities.

So basically I'ma take this opportunity to say Randall if is all "hurr durr SCIENCE more important than PUNY HUMANS." then he is a douche.

(As an aside if he doesn't think English is an important subject no wonder he write not good)

Wait, it's a sign of immaturity to change your mind when people present reasonable arguments? God, what the fuck, everybody is retarded.

LOOK WHATEVER I JUST THOUGHT SO HARD AND I REALIZED THAT RANDALL IS SO FAR ABOVE THIS MORTAL PLANE OF COMPREHENSIBLE WRITING, EMOTIONAL MATURITY, AND BASIC STANDARDS OF HUMOR THAT AS LONG AS HE SAYS SOMETHING I DON'T REALLY UNDERSTAND I WILL DUTIFULLY "LOL" LOL

Y'all missed it. A person didn't appear in the game, the "pretentious asshole" was right in front of her (she looked up and poof there he was!) This is a pretty common form of sarcasm, not that funny really, but better than how Carl read it.

The only workaround I can think of for having two of the same girl in one frame would have been to split the frame up. However, then it would have either had a relatively empty frame, or he would have made stilted dialogue to try and fill it more, and probably a response from the guy after the punchline.

Anon at 6:30, you're just being stupidly smuggy. Carl didn't come up with the idea and, as far as I know, the book will still be delivered, though that depends on Aloria. Also, what Aloria said. I'm still of opinion he deserves getting that book delivered, and now even more with that "liberal arts" quote on the page. Damn, Randal...

And, no, Adam, I don't think so. We all knew Scribblenauts would be released by September 15th, he just had to make a comic and upload it to that time.

I was confused because when she summoned pretentious asshole another version of her popped up in real life, so I thought it was saying she was the pretentious asshole, but that didn't really make sense.That's what my first impression was, too. I actually liked the comic more when I thought that was the intention, because it almost seemed like a healthy dose of self-awareness. Guess not, though.

But overall, I think this week's comics have been slightly better than the usual crap - not good, but not particularly rage-inducing either. Meh.

Lots of stuff about the game on this sense leaked, Adam. People knew ahead of time that stuff like "Longcat" and "Rick Roll" were available, so I'm pretty sure "LHC" was also advertised as to show how this game is so cool because you can create practically everything. I'm pretty sure I read about it long ago, in fact...

I feel like we are missing out on a deliriously unproductive piracy debate. To get the ball rolling:

Why is it whenever a game with the sort of style or imagination that would appeal to a 'Net-based fanbase gets justifiably hyped up (World of Goo, Scribblenauts), that audience's reaction seems to be "like hell I'm gonna pay for THAT!" and it gets pirated out the wazoo?

I don't think he'll freak out reverse-rickroll-comic style. He won't go "AAH WHERE'S THE XKCD SUCKS BOOK!!?" and run through a wall.

He will think you are too afraid to give him the book after all. You're all talk when it comes to being anonymous behind a screen, but when it's real life, when you can go right up to his face and try to make a difference, you're too scared.

The game has been big news for ages now. Penny Arcade covered it like three months ago.

I am so non-Nintendo-DS that I've never even _seen_ that console live (I swear!) and even I have heard of Scribblenauts. It's been that big news, justified or not.

I guess when Penny Arcade or any other comic has an episode about something that's interesting to the authors (vidya game) but goes under xkcdsucks's radar, that's fine, because you know, they are writing about stuff that matters to them and it's perfectly okay that people who are following the same kind of news will make sense of it, and people who don't care for new console games won't. It's not "too niche, even for a nerd comic".

But when xkcd does that, it's "Randall is making obscure references again" and "Randall thinks he's being cool by playing a DS game".

God forbid that he would ever make a math joke again, because we know nobody in the world gives a shit about math.

Jesus christ Kirk, Carl is clearly saying he only found out what the game was between reading the comic and writing the review. He's outright complaining that the comic is based on something obscure, and I'm saying it's not really that obscure at all.

It's okay to not know about the game. Carl probably doesn't care for gaming news and I guess a lot of the forumites don't either.

But it's weird to assume that because *you* haven't heard of the game it must be something obscure or niche. Especially if you don't follow gaming news anyway.

I disliked this comic because it's essentially a product placement (while still managing to recycle one of his endlessly reused joke premises- see 'ballpit' and 'super soakers'), but I have to say I actually liked the way he did the last panel. Considering all Randall does is stick figures, it's always nice to see him try something new artistically (but no more graphic anatomy please!). I had no trouble figuring out what was going on and overall I think it provided a nice change in pace to a comic that's otherwise utterly bland. OTOH, I think I've seen that effect before somewhere, so it's probably less jarring to me than it might be for others.

I swear I didn't get what was going on in the last frame the first time around. Matter of fact, I don't even think that's too much of a problem. The biggest problem is that the joke is awful -- IF you can call that a joke.

... ok, dress up as an xkcd character? NOW I'm baffled.Now one scary thought just occurred to me: Aloria, what are the odds of you bumping into people wearing xkcd ties? That's a sufficiently horrifying thought to me to make me praise your courage.

I'm not sure I want to know how she would plan to dress up for either of the above.

Regarding this comic: I'm pretty certain, both when I first saw it and after reading the comments here, that what the girl does is type the command, then go "Oh look, you're sitting right in front of me, the game's so accurate it summons things into real life!" as opposed to the guy appearing in the game (which I think is the stance most people here are coming away with?) Which means it makes a bit more sense, but is still rather dull. On the other hand I had no problem with the final panel in terms of its time-share technique.

I guess you have a lower threshold for pretension than us. Then again, I spend a lot of time in Williamsburg, Brooklyn-- hipster capital of the world-- so I may have been numbed to the ways of the douchebag.

Also, Sribblenauts was mentioned by a lot of gaming media as one of the best things at E3, a large expo where the game could be played so I don't see why having the comic on release date means anything.

Generally speaking, people often make the mistake of assuming that since they know about an event, the event in question must be well known. Because of the diversification of news, it is very easy for people to have completely different ideas of what is going around the world. I mean, there is a reason why you feel like MSNBC and Fox News are reporting about two different parallel dimensions, and they are reporting on the same subject matter!

I knew about Scribblenauts because I follow Kotaku.com, if I didn't follow Kotaku, then I would have no idea what Scribblenauts is.

But xkcd has had a long history, since the good old days (#5, #9, #12...) of featuring stuff that Randall cares about without any regard to whether other people care about it. The idea was probably that he wrote for people who care about the same things he does, so if we don't care about them then we won't care for the comic either, and that's fine. And most webcomics do the same.

He does go overboard now and then. Beer commercial parody comic, I'm looking at you.

"Except, we don't know that the "pretentious asshole" looks like him because we don't actually see what pops up, we are just assured that it must be him. We also get the awkwardness of seeing the girl twice in one panel. There's really no good reason for that. I know that a comic doesn't have to have one panel correspond to one image, one moment in time in a story, but that's at least how xkcd does it basically all the time. So that's weird."

Wait, it's not obvious at all. That joke makes no sense. Is this supposed to be some magical game of scribblenauts that affects the players' lives? Of course not. She's saying that (or pretending that) the game made a dude like the guy in front of her appear - in the game - when she typed in "pretentious asshole". the end.

Sorry Carl, you didn't get this comic. It's not that the pretentious asshole is programmed in the game, but rather that she's making fun of the man, by saying that when she typed it in, he appeared in front of her. Why else would she say "Oh hi,"?

how are we supposed to know that? We don't see what is there. She doesn't say "OK, I am typing in 'pretentious asshole now' " or anything like that. Picture it from his point of view - he says the game is OK, she pauses for a second, and then says "Oh hi! it worked!" How is he supposed to think that it's making fun of him?

What the hell is this?

Welcome. This is a website called XKCD SUCKS which is about the webcomic xkcd and why we think it sucks. My name is Carl and I used to write about it all the time, then I stopped because I went insane, and now other people write about it all the time. I forget their names. The posts still seem to be coming regularly, but many of the structural elements - like all the stuff in this lefthand pane - are a bit outdated. What can I say? Insane, etc.

I started this site because it had been clear to me for a while that xkcd is no longer a great webcomic (though it once was). Alas, many of its fans are too caught up in the faux-nerd culture that xkcd is a part of, and can't bring themselves to admit that the comic, at this point, is terrible. While I still like a new comic on occasion, I feel that more and more of them need the Iron Finger of Mockery knowingly pointed at them. This used to be called "XKCD: Overrated", but then it fell from just being overrated to being just horrible. Thus, xkcd sucks.

Here is a comic about me that Ann made. It is my favorite thing in the world.

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